


Five Joors

by ultharkitty



Series: Driveshaft [2]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:16:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set on Cybertron before the war.</p><p>Slag-for-Chips can’t remember his proper name any more, but he can remember a whole load of other things.</p><p>Contans: dark themes, including implied rape, implied torture, murder of OC, enslavement, implied slash. Bleak.</p><p>Companion piece to 'The Tragic Tale of Shiny and Slag-for-Chips'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Joors

It didn’t take long before he forgot his own name.

He could remember his partner, Driveshaft. A slick of blue, quick and loud in the Praxus night. Glimmering with a dozen shades of neon, the air thick with burning rubber. It was always so good between them, so hot and fast and easy.

He clung to those memories, the endless drives, the foolhardy races. A trunk full of high grade, a compartment stacked with mood enhancers. All good, clean fun, or if it was bad and dirty fun, it was the kind that never hurt anyone.

Driveshaft used to call him something, a pet name, a shortened version of his designation. But he’d forgotten it. Too many botched attempts at reprogramming, too many blows to the head when he stumbled or recharged too late or forgot one of a long list of things he was meant to do.

Too long spent with Vortex, shut up in the dark. His fans whirred, it was too warm, the walls too close. His new frame needed room, air, the freedom of the skies, not this enforced intimacy, a grey arm slung over him, a leg hooked around his own. But Vortex had locked him up, taken his transformation cog, made him walk everywhere. Said he should never have had the upgrade to an airframe, said he should have stayed a grounder like he deserved. Like Shiny.

He shuddered. Couldn’t call him Shiny, his designation was Driveshaft. He corrected himself: _had been_ Driveshaft.

The memories changed, files opening without a conscious command, scenes playing and replaying without his consent. Driveshaft’s blank expression in the footage Vortex sent across half the galaxy to lure him back to Cybertron. The moment in that office when he knew he’d played it wrong. A mosaic of demolition, ripe with ozone and spattered with oil. Flattened tires and rusting gears, a laser core bright and shining and so very far from its rightful place. Then dull, crumpled, squeezed between dark fingers until there was no light left at all.

The memories kept coming, unstoppable as the interrogator’s cold rages, unpreventable as his forthcoming reformatting. Driveshaft was dead, along with his freedom, his peace of mind. And soon, he would lose his sentience too.

A professional job this time, Vortex had told him. Get his chips cleaned out, get his databanks removed. Start afresh, new and eager and competent. A proper little drone.

He stifled a whimper. He couldn’t make noise; Vortex would wake, would hurt him. Best just to lay here, to focus on the memories, to gain control again over what played and what remained locked away.

He had five joors left to remember his partner, before he lost Driveshaft like he’d lost his own name. Five joors. He steered his mind back to Praxus; it wasn’t long enough.


End file.
